


(Don't) Stay

by bravelikealady



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6268123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John McAvoy dies but his weight remains and Will feels like he's the one who belongs in the ground...</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Don't) Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplyprologue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/gifts).



He is amidst clutter and darkness when he hears the knock at the door. Is he surprised? No. Surprise is for someone who feels and Will knows better than that. He leans his head back and closes his eyes, as if that will make it go away, but it never did make anything go away. Guess this is no different. Bottle still in hand, vision blurred, maybe just drowsy, from the alcohol or the muscle relaxers or the few Vicodin he found buried in his bedside drawer, he creeps to the place he thinks his front door is. Bingo. Without attempting the peephole, he opens it. He wasn’t expecting anything but especially not this.

“You look awful, Will.”

 

He shrugs and turns away from her, flagging her in even though he knows she’ll enter anyway. 

 

“I’ll shut the door myself then.”

 

“You do that.”

 

Mac flips the lights on and he groans long enough to let her know he meansfuck you. He launches himself onto his couch, face down, legs hanging off the end. He feels the weight of her land on the couch space that remains beside his head. 

 

“You smell like you,” he half whispers, half snarls, lifting his head enough to look at the well of concern in her eyes, resting below her chestnut hair, so neat that he knows she stress brushed it before she came up. She weakly titters in reply and rests her hand on his head for a moment, “have you spoken to your sister?”

 

“No.”

 

“She’s looking for you-”

 

“I know.”

 

“She called Charlie trying to find you, Will, I think she needs you, and I think you need her and-” her voice is rising now, her vocal cords straining under pressure and emotion that Will himself might be feeling if he didn’t go straight home and ingest his patented concoction for pretending he’s a grown man, a stressed out worker, a high class gentlemen, something other than a shell hollow other than the guilt of not protecting enough, not stopping it, of still loving a father who…

 

“I KNOW,” he barks, louder and meaner than he meant to, he isn’t mad at Mac after all, not about this anyway, he thinks, stumbling his way up and crossing to the kitchen, pulling out a fresh bottle of bourbon, trying to remember that he doesn’t feel anything…

 

But he does.

 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Mac’s hands are on his face.

 

“I know you hate me a little. But I know you and I need you to listen to me.”

 

Will laughs bitterly, and then softly, like a child. “Okay.”

 

“Pour me one, will you?”

 

He laughs, takes down a glass and does. She tries to take it, but he shoos her hand away. He grabs two ice cubes from the freezer and drops them in. “I remember,” he says.

 

“Thank you,” she replies, sipping from her glass like she’s in a proper place, like she isn’t in the middle of debris and ruin from Hurricane McAvoy.

 

Hurricane McAvoy. He laughs at the thought because he doesn’t know if he means himself or his father, or even his sisters, the sisters he’s ignoring now instead of consoling, the sisters he was never very good at protecting.

 

“What’s funny?” she asks, bumping into his side. 

 

He looks at her for a moment and thinks of how he wants to kiss her, of how he wants nothing more than to find himself wrapped in her little bird arms, graceful and strong, and sleep in the scent and warmth of her until he’s dead himself. He realizes he’s leaning towards her, he questions why she isn’t moving, and he stops himself, steadying himself with assistance from the counter.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“When’s the funeral? Do you know?”

 

Most of his body isn’t crying anymore. He can feel tears running down his cheeks. 

 

“If you wipe those away I’ll still pretend you aren’t crying, Will.” The remark is disguised as a dagger but her voice is soft, velvet, dark and enveloping.

 

He wishes her head set was on, wishes she had business to deal with, things to get to, wishes he could take a cheap shot, see her jaw clench, before she’s guaranteed to give a measure of time (he hears her in his sleep, “30 seconds”, “15 seconds”, “ten seconds”) and disappear.

 

“You don’t have to stay,” he says, and he congratulates himself on a job well done.  _ I almost sounded like a fucking person _ .

 

“I know I don’t.”

  
They both take a gulp, she from the glass, he from the bottle. Will’s phone rings. He knows it’s his sister. Mac answers it for him.


End file.
